The Cleaning Station
by femme4jack
Summary: One-shot ficlet. My imaginary Movie-verse Wheeljack and Perceptor chat on the beach.  Giftfic for Zomgitsalaura on her 20th birthday


**Title: ** The Cleaning Station**  
Prompt 1: **January 19 Choose one prompt from the master list...  
**Continuity:** Bayverse, influenced by An Cailin Rua's Tricolora AU  
**Author**: **femme4jack**  
**Rating**: PG  
**Warnings:** None. Yes, I managed to write something with absolutely no mech smut, xeno, cussing, and it isn't a crackfic**  
Words:** 696  
**Time:** 45 minutes**  
Note**s: For **zomgitsalaura** on her 20th birthday. Have some Wheeljack and Perceptor on the beach. 

Wheeljack sat on the beach, his spindly legs stretched out into the waves. His chem receptors delighted in the ever-changing makeup of the each one that crashed over his pede supports, two alien rocks jutting slightly out of the water. Several small fish were exploring his knee joint and others had managed to make their way under the armor of his upper pede to tickle an energon line.

He had been on many organic worlds. Earth was neither more nor less beautiful than the others. It did, however, have an extraordinary surplus of organic life. Every intake of air to cool his systems filled him with microbes that could steal his attention for joors as he analyzed them and watched them making their way around his systems. Every step he took added to the symphony of microscopic life coating his pede supports that no amount of washing could fully remove. Not that he wanted to. Each time he touched an animal or one of the sentient organics, whether it was of the primate or cetacean variety (he'd made friends with both), part of them literally stayed with him. Dead skin cells for the most part, but not all. He loved that the carbon atoms that made up some of his alloys were exchanged with the carbon atoms of this world, that the building block of organic life became part of his own complex systems, and that his carbon molecules were now a part of those around him.

Yes, he loved the messiness of it all. He loved it as much as some of his kind despised it. He had been built and sparked to think laterally like sentient organics, to take wild leaps of intuition, to dream. As such, the tiny primates, alive for but a blink of his existence, understood him far better than the mechas who had known him longer than the backwater planet had existed.

::Brother! Come sit with me,:: he comm-ed the shorter, more heavily armored scientist heading his way on the beach.

::We do not have the means to be genetically related siblings. While we may share the same creator, it would be far more accurate to describe us as being a part of the same cohort,:: the scientist-turned sniper-turned scientist responded in cultured High Cybertronian.

::I love you to, big brother,:: Wheeljack responded, his finals flashing rapidly at red and white mech who sat down beside him, legs awkwardly bent to keep them out of the water.

::The salinity of this water is likely to corrode your systems, and the sand is not much of an improvement over it. You also have 17 _Labroides dimidiati _under your armor. Ratchet will not be pleased.::

::Though I am pleased that you are remaining silent so as not to frighten them, brother. I am glad your approach did not make them flee. The Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse are a fascinating species. I wonder if Ratchet might consider their use in removing all of the organic matter that accumulates under our armor? A mecha cleaning station, inhabited by Bluestreaks! Only not nearly so talkative. Did you know that in the Gulf of Mexico, the most common cleaner fish are Neon Gobies, and one of the species they clean are referred to as Jack fish?::

Perceptor cycled his optics once, making no comment, though he did allow his EM field to mingle with that of the taller, thinner Autobot in unspoken affection.

::So what brings you out of your lab today, Perceptor?:: Wheeljack asked after a moment of silent enjoyment of the familiar field brushing against his own combined with the more alien sensations of the cleaner fish moving among his gears, cogs and lines.

::In order to spend some time in the company of your lateral thinking so as to remind myself that no matter how exasperating I find the bipedal primates, there is someone who is infinitely more frustrating to my processors,:: the scientist replied without hesitation.

The Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse all fled as the inventor's finials flashed in mischief and he suddenly sprung on the scientist, pinning him to the sand.

"Oh, dearest big brother, I love you, too!"


End file.
